With the explosive proliferation of IP-enabled mobile and fixed devices capable of offering Web, telecommunications and entertainment services, such as 3G/4G-enabled smartphones, TVs, home appliances, gaming consoles, and automobiles, among others, operators of mobile, broadband and fixed networks are faced with the operational and business challenges of delivering innovative IP-based communication services with maximum profitability. In order to achieve this goal, customers are increasingly migrating away from expensive, closed, proprietary and application-specific legacy platforms, and towards low-cost, open, standards-based unified converged application platforms, which dramatically lowers the time and cost of adding new features and extensions to existing IP-based communication services.
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a control (signaling) protocol developed to manage interactive multimedia IP sessions including IP telephony, presence, and instant messaging. SIP Servlet provides a standard Java API programming model for delivering SIP-based services. SIP Servlet APIs expose the full capabilities of the SIP protocol in a Java and Java EE middleware solution. The SIP Servlet APIs also enable multiple applications to execute on the same request or response, independently of one another. Thus application developers can write applications providing features that are independent of each other, but can be deployed to the same host SIP Servlet container. SIP Servlet APIs thereby provide a programming model that is as well suited to meet the needs of the application developer and the operational requirements of the service provider.
There are many use cases in which a converged application operating on multiple services/protocols is desirable. A converged application using both SIP and HTTP functions can be used, for example, for: conferencing; click-to-call applications; Presence; and User Agent Configuration Management applications. A converged telecommunication application framework is a framework designed to abstract complexities for SIP Servlets to provide a set of easily usable artifacts which enable easy creation of programs. The SIP Servlet API is closely aligned with the Java EE specifications and containers that host SIP Servlet applications can also make Java EE features such as a HTTP Servlet container available to developers. Converged applications can also combine other protocols such as Diameter to perform advanced functions such as modifying subscriber profile data. A converged application server can, thus, deliver a converged application container, offering integrated support for Java EE, SIP, Web Services, and IMS standards.